Having shot original Colt SAA's, pre-1900 Marlins and early Winchester 97's in Cowboy Action Shooting for several years, I'd bet on me with a Colt SAA against a 'bad guy' with a Glock any day of the week.
I took a few defensive handgun courses with a local (former military) instructor. His first comment to me was to ask if I'd shot CAS matches in the past.
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast! I think Col Cooper first said that.
For what it's worth, my instructor ran us through 'double tap, then tap' drills for vest situations.
I've heard of the "Mozambique" and "Failure to Stop" drill, but not the "double tap, then tap" drill. Is it any different?
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I'm not sure it matters. I used to practice double taps when I shot practical pistol competition on a regular basis. However, I moved away from the double tap for the same reasons I moved away from what practical pistol competition had become. The double tap makes sense when you need to put two shoots in virtually every target to "neutralize" it and many of those targets are at close range. It also makes sense when you have silly rules that assume the nearest targets are the greatest threats and must be neutralized first. In that environment you can start out double tapping and then transition to controlled pairs as the distance and accuracy requirement increases.
The problem with a double tap is that you are training to put 2 rounds in every target, and quite frankly accuracy still suffers.
Over time, shooting at ranges beyond a couple yards - out at 7, 10, 15 and 25 yards - I found a controlled pair to be much more useful than a double tap. My splits are still down around .3 seconds and the accuracy is 10 ring and A zone worthy at 15 yards and a very slight increase in split times delivers the same accuracy at 25 yards.
If you practice to establish the flash sight picture, fire a shot, re establish the sight picture, fire the second shot, and then re establish the sight picture, you've set your self up for a Mozambique/failure to stop scenario, with a fraction of a second pause as you transition to the head and assess whether the target is going down or not.
My controlled pairs are also based on the slow is smooth, smooth is fast concept. When I teach a new shooter to shoot a pistol, I teach them to:
- smoothly and slowly bring the pistol up from a low ready position into their line of sight looking at the target;
- Focus on the front sight and put it on the spot on the target they want to hit;
- then pause and precisely align the rear sight on the front sight;
- keep the sights aligned while they squeeze the trigger; then
- bring the front sight back on target and pause to align the sights.
Over hundreds of repetitions, they develop a consistent grip and the muscle memory needed for the rear sight to be aligned with the front sight with no need to refine the alignment, unless it's a 25, 50 or 100 yard shot. The pause then becomes just a brief check that the sights are aligned and the front sight is on target.
Similarly, over repetition they develop the trigger control needed to squeeze the trigger without disturbing the sights.
At that point they can start picking up the pace, until the splits between two or three aimed shots is down in the 1/4-1/3rd second range. At that point the pause is near non existent but still serves to confirm the target, and whether the target still needs to be shot.
As long as they include so,e long range practice to ensure they maintain good sight alignment, accuracy won't degrade as it often does when someone just focuses on a speed and "double taps".
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There's a built in advantage with a DA revolver where the long and comparatively heavy DA pull isn't conducive to a double tap, but both works well with and encourages a controlled pair.
A single action revolver arguably has that same "advantage" in spades, provided the shooter doesn't deviate from the slow is smooth, smooth is fast approach and start compromising the fundamentals and related accuracy.
